[Buick61]

General Motors Company was incorporated in New Jersey on September 16, 1908.

As part of the celebration, I thought GMI would look back on the company's achievements. We'll start, as most stories do, at the beginning. Hopefully, each decade will be a chapter, and each chapter will have three parts: the most significant advancement, most influential personality, and the most significant automobile. The stories will be short, but hopefully some of you will learn something.

This is Part I of the first decade.

Innovation: 1911-Self Starter (1912 Cadillac)

Purportedly inspired by and adopted from a cash register motor, the electric self-starter motor would revolutionize the automobile itself, the auto-industry at large, and the direction of future automotive development. Taking the place of the potentially dangerous and physically demanding hand-crank, the electric self starter was instrumental in helping gasoline-powered automobiles became a viable transportation alternative for the motoring public. It is said that this singular invention was the death knell for early electric cars [probably horses, too], which were popular at the turn of the 20th Century for their ease of use for the mechanically adverse.

The “father” of the electric starter was famed inventor, Charles Kettering. Kettering co-founded Dayton Electric Laboratories (DELCO). Early on, Kettering and the lab were responsible for the development of a high-energy spark ignition system that found favor in Cadillac’s Henry Leland, who ordered the system for the 1910 Cadillac line.

The follow-up to that success would be an industry changer.

In 1911, Kettering invented and patented the electric self starter, which also doubled as a generator (GM’s current BAS system’s earliest precursor). Once again, Cadillac was on the ground floor for Kettering’s invention. The starter appeared on 1912 Cadillacs along with generator-battery lighting and ignition systems, and the rest, as the cliché goes, is history.





Stay tuned...

*As always, I encourage feedback, corrections, and clarifications. History is made up of stories, and everyone has their own version.*